Geez, I wish I would have known about this site earlier. I CANNOT BELIEVE that a few months before my stumbling in here KEYCON was in actually in my town and at my alma mater! Damn!
I'm sorry to admit that I have tried many keyboards without ever knowing that the distinction of mechanical boards... but I will have one here soon.
Anyway, I have been trying mice, game-pads (and I never game) and keyboards semi-randomly for YEARS trying to be more "at one" with my machine. What that partly means is moving repetitive strain from one place to another hoping to eventually just force it out of the door.
Notes about mice - after a sequence of mice with ever more buttons I have stepped back to what I think is just right for me - Kensington Expert Mouse (a track ball with 4 buttons and a scroll wheel).
Notes about other devices - my mouse hand grew so tired with my multi-button mice that I decided I needed a left hand mouse -- that was the Nostromo n52. Macros, some navigation and being able to actuate autoscroll with the left hand was surely going to be nirvana. It wasn't. Moving my hand off the keyboard seemed to balance out any gain in the long run.
Notes about keyboards - at some point I came across a $12 keyboard that had cut/copy/paste buttons on the left side, a scroll wheel that clicked and some other buttons on the side. Along the top it has the buttons that you can assign to launch apps or open web pages. Even though driver support stopped for this thing probably 10 years ago I loved this thing. About a year ago I shifted my focus to learning keyboard shortcuts for every app I use and trying my best to be as mouseless as possible. In parallel I have accumulated many keyboards to see if any gave me an additional edge. But I didn't know about mechanical keyboards and I haven't even tried out all of my dome switch stash yet!
My idea of user interface nirvana now looks like the day when using the mouse almost never happens and I type about twice as fast as now (via practice) on a board that feels good. A good goal for 2014.
